Every one breathed much more freely, and they all smiled and nodded towards the window; and the face nodded back, but it did not smile.
‘He must have run away,’ said Charles, ‘like I told him to.’
‘It wasn’t you; it was me,’ said Charlotte promptly.
‘I like this much better than its being invisible people,’ said Charles, changing the subject a little. ‘This is something like an adventure.’
‘We shouldn’t have had it without coming down for the fern-seed,’ Caroline reminded him. And again they all nodded and smiled. The face outside moved its lips. It was saying something, but they could not hear what it said.
‘It is that Rupert boy,’ Caroline insisted; ‘and he’s run away to us. What larks!’
And again she nodded, and so did Charles. But Charlotte said, ‘Don’t let’s go on nodding like Chinese pagodas. Of course, it wants to come in.’ And at once the others saw that this was the case.
‘He can’t get in here,’ Charlotte said; and, indeed, to have moved that table on which the fern-filled bell-glass stood surrounded by unhappy-looking little ferns in little dry pots, with bits of old tumbler arched protectively over them, would have been dangerous, and probably noisy. And, unless they removed the ferny difficulties, it was quite plain that the window could not be opened.
‘The morning-room is next door—Mrs. Wilmington called it that,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s a French window. She said so. It opens all right. I know how the fastenings go.’